


Deep Breaths

by Kate_Viche



Category: Kingdom Hearts, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arc: Desperate Revival c0251-0260 | e0188-0193 (Meitantei Conan), But they're sweet, Crossover, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kogoro is a good dad, M/M, Mild Angst, Shinichi gets shot, Shinichi has a hard time with feelings, Sora cares about his friends, Sora gets anxiety, Surprisingly Shinichi is the one doing the comforting, Who cares about his two idiot adopted sons, both are shrunken, crackship, good boys, i have no idea what this is, like it can be read platonically, mainly platonic - Freeform, mild romance at the end, who need hugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 17:57:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19835542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Viche/pseuds/Kate_Viche
Summary: When Shinichi finds himself with a bullet wound in his stomach, the thought of death hadn't really crossed his mind. His main concern was getting the kids out alive. Of course, he hasn't really thought what sort of repercussions he might face after the incident.After all, how do you apologize to the person who almost watched you die?





	Deep Breaths

**Author's Note:**

> I'm... not really sure what this is. Some weird concoction of sleep deprivation and a want to combine my two favorite things, I suppose. Anyhow, its what it says on the tin. Mild Shinichi/Sora from Kingdom Hearts. Hope you enjoy.

Shinichi is still groggy when he wakes up.

Which would be obvious, of course. He had surgery for a bullet wound, its assumed that he’d still be on pain medication. If he really tries hard enough, he could probably even feel the slight tinge of pain in his abdomen.

The day had been hectic, Ran, the doctors and even Kogoro fussing over him like a baby. Of course, he is still in the body of a six year old, so that’s to be expected. Still, it was mentally draining to have to keep saying over and over again, “Yes, I’m fine. No, it doesn’t hurt that much. No, Ran-neechan, I didn’t mean to get shot.” The last answer was implied, because he’s sure that’s the only thing running through her mind. 

The moment that the doctors determined he wouldn’t drop dead from any mild altercations, Shinichi helped himself to a nap. Even if he was sixteen mentally, he was still six physically, so he was prone to exhaustion fairly easily. A part of him wants to feel annoyed by his predicament, but he’s too sore and tired to really muster up the tight ball of anger and resentment at the moment. 

Still, he groans slightly at the twinge of discomfort stinging his sides and the way the sun beats down mercilessly on his eyes through the open window (why the heck wouldn’t they close the blinds for a surgery patient? No common decency). For just a few moments, he simply allows himself to just bask in the relief that envelops him from surviving a near death experience. He tries not to think about the questions the police will undoubtedly have, the dotting that he’ll face for the next month and a half at the _least_ , the suspicions that Ran must have had for the longest time. He simply just… relaxes. Takes a few deep breaths, and reminds himself that he’s alive. 

It's because he’s so hyper focused on himself does he register the slightest little twitch on his hand, as if something had squeezed it by the smallest amount. Was he holding something? 

Shinichi’s curiosity winning over him, he gently pries his eyes open. The light blinds him momentarily, before his eyes adjust to it and he glances to the side to see what he was holding. Still groggy and disoriented from sleep and the medication, it takes a few moments for him to really register what his hand was holding- or, rather, what was holding his hand.

Sora looked… well, worse for the wear would be a mild understatement. Shinichi can’t recall a time he looked so unkempt and worried. His shoulders tense, and his mouth tugged down in a tight frown. Dark bags stuck out beneath his eyes, betraying the fact that he probably hadn’t had much sleep in the past couple of days. It was… a startling sight, to be frank. To see the usually peppy and upbeat boy look so ragged and in disarray looked wrong, in a sense. It left him with a bad taste in his mouth, and something akin to worry rise up in his chest. 

“He’s been here all night.” Kogoro’s voice startles him, Shinichi whirling around to face the taller man in the doorway. Kogoro is leaning against the wall, staring down at the subject of their conversation with what looked like concern. “Didn’t even leave once during your surgery, and he stayed awake all night until you woke up.” 

“Why wasn’t he in the room when I first woke up?” Shinichi finds himself asking, cringing at the croak in his voice. Kogoro sighs, crossing into the room and seating himself at the foot of the bed. He hands Shinichi the cup of water he’d been carrying -that he’d neglected to notice- and lets him down it. The water is a refreshing relief going down his throat.

“He was slightly hysterical when they were bringing you in. They weren’t sure how having a little brat in the room might affect your condition.” The words sound harsh, but Shinichi was able to spot the way Kogoro glances over at Sora with something almost like sympathy in his eyes. “He just stayed outside the room until they let him in.” 

“Oh.” Having nothing left to say, Shinichi continues drinking his water. A part of him wonders if he should release his hand from Sora’s hold, but decides against it.

“We were all worried about you.”

“Huh?” Shinichi glances back up at Kogoro, the man looking back at him with rare sincerity.

“As much as I love to pretend you’re an annoying freeloader, I do care about you, brat, and so does Ran. So try not to get yourself shot again?” Kogoro sighs, pinching at the bridge of his nose. Shinichi hadn’t noticed until now, but Kogoro looked worse for the wear as well. It looked like he'd been drinking a little, if his slightly flushed cheeks and mild incoordination was anything to go by. Maybe he’d been drinking out of worry? His intoxication seemed to stem from more serious issues and a need for dependency than his usual easygoing drinking habits.

Briefly, Shinichi is a loss for words. He had assumed Kogoro hadn’t really cared about him, just the fact that he was getting money having him around. Personally, Shinichi hadn’t really cared what Kogoro had thought of him either way, as long as Shnichi was able to do his job and look after Ran. But… he won’t lie and say it isn’t nice to know that Kogoro does care, in his own way.

“I’ll try not to,” he replies, feeling a teasing grin cross his face, “No promises, though.”

Kogoro sighs, but smiles nonetheless. “I guess that’s the best I’ll get, you little trouble magnet.” Before Shinichi can really register it, Kogoro reaches forward and ruffles his hair. Its… nice, in a comforting way. All of a sudden, though, Kogoro is standing and leaving the room with only, “Make sure you two get some rest, or Ran will be upset,” as his parting words.

Shinichi isn’t really sure what to think of the exchange, so he decides to just not really think about it. Repression is a best friend, after all. However, that leaves him with the ever pressing concern of Sora, and how he’s going to comfort the other shrunken teen.

If he were being honest with himself, he wasn’t expecting to come out of that experience alive, much less get the kids out. So he had trusted Sora with it. And what a terrible thing to do to someone. If he closes his eyes, he can almost clearly remember the exact words he had said, and the way Sora had vehemently tried to deny them.

_“My chances of making it out of this are slim, Sora,” he had said, Sora crouched down in front of him and keeping pressure on the gaping bullet wound in his stomach. The kids were placing the tracking dots for the professor and Haibara to find, so he only had a brief time to tell Sora what he needed to do. “My chances of making it out of this alive and getting the kids out are even slimmer.”_

_“What the hell are you saying?” Sora had whispered in quiet anger, refusing to even look him in the eyes and keeping his stare focussed entirely on the wound. “If you think I’m leaving you behind you’ve got another thing coming.”_

_“Sora-”_

_“No! I’m not leaving you to die, okay?!” Sora’s gaze had snapped up, eyes blurry with unshed tears as he glared at Shinichi. “Now shut up and let me think of how I’m gunna carry you.”_

If Sora _had_ left him there… well, he wouldn’t be alive, that's for sure. The thieves would have found him and- yeah, he didn’t really want to think about it. Sora’s denial of their situation and refusal to leave him behind had inevitably saved his life, and there wasn’t really a way to just say, ‘thank you,’ for that. The responsibility of not only getting his unconscious, wounded body out of mortal danger but also the kids? It must have been beyond terrifying.

So, it was reasonable that when Sora’s face scrunched up in a way that said he was about to wake up, Shinichi mildly panicked. He had no idea what he was going to say to him. ‘Hey, I’m sorry I almost died and left you all alone in a life or death situation. Please forgive me and pretend it never happened.’

Yeah, right.

It was reasonable to say that Shinichi panicked a bit _more_ when Sora suddenly jolted up, eyes wild in fright as he whispered a single pained, _“Shinichi.”_

Obviously Sora had some sort of nightmare, obviously about what happened a mere day ago, obviously about something bad something happening to Shinichi. So he did the only sensible he could think of, which was squeeze the hand still in his own as say, “Hey, Sora. Sora, I’m alright!”

It took a few seconds, but Sora eventually registered that he was alive, well, and sitting in front of him. He let out a few more ragged breaths, dragging a hand down his face as he let himself calm down. Shinichi frowned in concern, briefly wanting to ask him if he was alright before deciding against it. It was probably best to allow him to recover on his own. Eventually, Sora’s breaths evened out, Shinichi giving his hand comforting squeezes every now and again. He still looked terrible, but at least his face wasn’t plagued by a frown caused by nightmares.

Finally, Sora glances up at him, baby blue eyes filled with concern as he asked, “You okay?”

Shinichi shrugged, mindful of the injury in his side. “As okay I can be, I suppose. They really gave me a lot of pain meds.” Sora chuckles, but his smile is all nervous and fake. His grasp on Shinichi’s hand seems to tighten by a small margin, and Shinichi can clearly tell he’s still shaken by the experience. “What about you?” he asks, feeling a bit awkward doing so. “Are you okay?”

Sora’s smile is all crooked. “If I say yes will you believe me?”

“Probably not,” Shinichi answers. Sora’s face is still pale, and the bags under his eyes just seem more prominent than before. There’s no definition of okay that fits Sora’s appearance.

“Yeah, didn’t think so,” Sora sighs, tearing his gaze from Shinichi’s as he glances down. There’s an ensuing silence after Sora speaks, one Shinichi isn’t quite sure how to fill. How does one comfort someone else after such an experience? Though Shinichi often likes to pretend he has the answers to everything, he feels out of his depth here. He wants to comfort his friend, but he has no idea how to.

“I keep closing my eyes and see you not breathing.”

The words uttered were quiet, nearly a whisper that Shinichi had to strain his ears to catch. There’s an unmistakable shakiness in Sora’s voice, and his grip on Shinichi’s hand seems to tighten. Shinichi remains silent, as Sora’s gaze seems off in the distance, as if remembering what happened. “I try to keep you alive but we don’t make it out in time, or they catch us, or you bleed out. I keep trying to save you but you keep dying.”

The more Sora speaks, the more hysterical he seems to get. Its subtle, but Shinichi had known him long enough to understand that Sora was able to bottle his true feelings almost admirably well, to the point that he really had to pay attention to know how he was feeling. For instance, the way that Sora’s voice cracks, just the smallest bit, the way his eyes seem so unfocused, the way his face pales and his hand shakes. It's the trivial details that let Shinichi know just how bad Sora is shaken up, and it's the fact that Shinichi is able to even spot them lets him know just how far Sora is slipping.

“Hey, hey,” he states gently, trying to gain Sora’s attention. It works, if a bit. Sora does glance his way, but he’s not really focussed on him. He needs to come back to his senses, Shinichi realizes. So, he takes the hand still in his and places it across his chest, just against the gentle _thump-thump, thump-thump_ of his beating heart. “You feel that? I’m okay, Sora. I’m alive.”

Sora bites his lip, taking deep and greedy inhales through his nose. There’s a desperate sort of way he just watches the hand resting on his chest, the way he tries to cling to his calm. Shinichi can’t really remember a time he saw Sora looked so panicked, even back in the caves, and it unsettles him. Had Sora been keeping his anxiety in check there only to let it out once the situation had passed, or had he simply repressed it until it exploded over, nearly taking him down with it? Shinichi really hopes it wasn’t the latter.

“I know it's silly,” Sora chuckles, almost self-deprecating, “but I keep thinking of us in that cave, and it feels so real. And I just forget.”

“It's not silly.” To himself, Shinichi thinks about how days after Gin had drugged him, he was still glancing behind him, always feeling like someone was watching him. Logically he knew Gin had no idea of knowing that he had survived, that he was the little 6 year old boy living with his brother, a drunkard detective and a female teenager. “Trauma doesn’t really care what's supposed to be real or not. If it thinks something should be wrong, it's going to make you believe it.”

And that's the kicker. Shinichi hates using the word trauma. He hates the way he has to use it for Sora, the sweet boy who got roped into a mess that wasn’t his own. He hates the way it's going to affect him now for who knows how long. Of course, Shinichi understands that its normal for traumatic events to haunt people, but he despises the way that he lugged Sora with its icy grip. It wasn’t fair.

“I know,” Sora sighs, closing his eyes briefly. Another silence ensues, one that Shinichi allows Sora to break whenever he feels ready. Sora’s unoccupied hand taps the mattress, his tongue darting between his teeth to lick his lips. “I think the worst part is seeing how close you were to dying.”

“Sora-”

“I hate that I couldn’t do anything. I was _useless,_ Shinichi. I couldn’t stop the bleeding, I couldn’t get us out in time, and you nearly got taken hostage.” Instead of tipping over the edge again, Sora makes sure to breathe in deeply this time. Frustrated tears well up in his eyes, and Shinnichi merely stays quiet as Sora spills his thoughts. “I hated seeing you get taken away, and then you almost didn’t make it out of surgery. And for hours I just kept thinking, is Shinichi gunna die?” He bites his lips again. “I hated every second of sitting outside that room, waiting to hear if you were okay. I was worried I’d never see you again.”

Shinichi isn’t quite sure how to respond. He hadn’t really expected Sora to be this hung up about what happened, and now that he is, he has no idea how to comfort him. “I am alive, Sora,” he finally decides, gripping the hand in his tightly. “I’m here because of you.”

Shinichi receives an annoyed glance for his words. “You almost weren't, Shinichi,” Sora sighs, lips tightening in a grimace. “I just keep thinking to myself how close you were to dying. Sure, you survived, but what if you don’t next time? What if the police don’t make it in time, or I’m not even there?”

“Life shouldn’t be lived with constant _what ifs_.” Gently, Shinichi pries Sora’s hand from his chest and lays it in his lap, clasping it with both of his hands. Rubbing soft circles into the skin, he continues, “So what if I do? There isn’t any guarantee that I’ll live past today, or tomorrow, or even ten years from now. I just have to live in the present.”

Sora smiles wryly. “You should be a writer.”

Shinichi smiles back. “I could always take up my father’s line of work if being a detective doesn’t work out.” He frowns. “He’d be annoyingly smug about it, though.” Sora laughs, a gentle grin on his face. Shinichi is glad that he’s not as anxious as before. Still, Sora doesn’t look quite convinced by his words, if the way his taunt shoulders and pinched eyebrows are anything to go by.

“I just…” Sora bites his lip. “You’re all I really have here, Shinichi. And I can’t imagine a world without you in it.” Ah. Shinichi can feel the way his cheeks warm up, red blossoming under his skin.

“Well then,” Shinichi says, placing a soft kiss against the back of the hand he holds, smiling as Sora blushes and sputters in embarrassment. “Good thing I have no intention of leaving anytime soon.”


End file.
